


Not Quite at First Sight

by raineavon



Category: Pinky and the Brain
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Demiromantic Brain, Fluff, I Tried, Love Confessions, Love is confusing and if I can't know the difference between platonic and romantic love, M/M, Not Beta Read, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, These two aren't allowed either, also, because that's all that I write, implied at least - Freeform, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:13:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29093298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raineavon/pseuds/raineavon
Summary: In a world where about 47% of people have soulmates, Acme labs has put millions of dollars into trying to guarantee them for everyone else. The only problem is Brain, the only subject without a soulmate. Maybe an abnormally strong and energetic mouse from the makeup department can solve that problem.
Relationships: Brain/Pinky (Pinky and the Brain)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 70





	1. When I First Saw Him

**Author's Note:**

> Take my soulmate AU, I wrote an outline for this. I didn't really stick to the outline all that well but I wrote it.

The Brain scribbled furiously on the notepad in front of him, stopping only to hastily type an equation into the calculator beside him. “Yes!” he scratched a final mark on his plan, possibly more for theatrics than practicality, and triumphantly ripped the scheme from the rest of the notepad. He folded it neatly and stashed it in his hammerspace before picking up his pencil again and jotting down all the materials he would need. “If my estimates are correct,” he said as he laid the last few pencil-strokes on the paper, “all I will need to take over the world is… two-point-five… million dollars…” He rubbed the space between his brows and sighed. His exasperation was interrupted by the sound of an opening door. “Drat. Shouldn’t you all have gone home by now?” he mumbled annoyed as he quickly shoved his things under the bed.

“We’re going to run out of subjects soon.”

“It can’t turn them  _ all _ away.”

Brain rolled his eyes, stepping over to stand by the cage door and wait for his latest suitor. The door opened and a shorter, portly mouse was shoved inside. Brain watched the door be closed but not locked again before turning to the mouse in front of him. They stood up and brushed themself off, looking tentatively around the cage. They turned their attention to the Brain and smiled. “Hi there, I’m Adri. It’s nice to meet you,” they held their hand out invitingly.

“Do not get your hopes up,” Brain responded curtly as he took their hand, letting them linger like that for a moment. No soulbound occurred and no soulmark appeared. Brain dropped their hands and motioned to the cage door, “You may go now.” He ignored the disappointment on Adri’s face and walked to the other side of the cage, cutting off any potential protests. He waited for the sound off the door opening and closing and the scientists taking Adri away. They left with frustrated grumbles about Brain ruining their “hard work.” 

Brain shook his head and rattled the cage door, in the half-hearted hope that it would be unlocked. It didn’t budge. He returned to his sponge bed and started mulling over his plan, refining every detail. He engrossed himself in his work, barely registering the crash sounding in the next room.

The door opened again and the sharp click of high heels on the linoleum floor startled the Brain from his trance as he hurriedly hid his materials away again. He glared at the form outside his cage, “Oh, don’t you people have better things to do with yourselves?”

“-destroys everything it touches.”

“Exactly.”

Brain froze, listening intently to the ominous talk of the humans, “We gave it a fake soulmark, so Three-alpha won’t reject it as quickly. We put them in a cage together and one way or another, at least one of our problems gets solved. I highly doubt there will be a soulbound since this one is from the makeup department, but it _is_ very likely that Seven-delta will kill Three-alpha.”

There was a pause, “Has it done something like this before?”

“Nearly. The subject would have died if we hadn’t separated them.”

There was a hum of approval and the clicking of heels sounded again. Brain dashed to the back of the cage and pressed against the bars, waiting for whatever abomination of a mouse was about to be unleashed upon him. The cage door opened and Brain screwed his eyes shut and wished for a moment that he believed in a god. He’d thought he had time before the humans gave up, but now, he was going to die without ever even getting out of his cage. He held his breath. The door closed, the heels clicked down the hall, and nothing happened.

The Brain listened for a few moments, hearing only the ambient sounds of the lab and the faintest sound of something breathing. He gingerly opened his eyes and yelped when they were met with a pair of sky blue ones. “Narf! Hello there,” the eyes said in a cheery cockney accent. The tall mouse backed away, revealing the less than intimidating body attached to those eyes. 

Brain blinked at the lanky figure, “I- who are you?”

The mouse straightened up, “Oh right, yes, yes- Poit- ahem: Hello. I am Pinky. I am a fellow lab mouse who is  _ not _ looking for a soulmate, because I already have one,” he paused his wooden pantomime to gesture to a smudged drawing of a soulmark on his thigh, “I am here due to downsizing; there was no room in the budget for my cage anymore. It is good to meet you; do you mind telling me your name- Troz!” Brain stared at him as an uncomfortable silence filled the room.

“Is that all?”

Pinky nodded ashamedly, “This wasn’t my idea! Honest!”

Brain rubbed his brow, “I can tell. Just... keep quiet.”

“Right-o!” the mouse immediately started running on the exercise wheel, its cheap mechanisms screeching in protest. Brain clapped a palm over his forehead but returned to his now severely wrinkled plan, doing his best tune out the squeaking wheel. After a few minutes, it seemed to have worked, until he saw Pinky’s shadow looming over him.

“What do you want?” he groaned.

The taller walked around front of him and studied his plan. “Zort. What’re you doing with all these squiggly lines and numbers?”

“The same thing I do every night, Pinky,” he sighed, “I’m trying to  _ take over the world! _ ”

“Naarf. Can I help?”

“What? No you can’t-” he broke off, scanning the form of the mouse in front of him. Pinky didn’t cut a particularly threatening figure, but he was big. Bigger than Brain, at least. Which meant he was stronger than Brain, and brute strength did seem to be one of the constant hindrances to the Brain’s rise to power. He watched Pinky for a moment, searching his face for any sign of deceit or ill-will. The lab-mouse just watched him back with a hopeful gleam in his eyes. Brain let out a breath, “Fine. You may assist me, but you must do  _ exactly _ what I tell you. Understood?”

He was swept up into a lung-crushing hug. “Narf! Oh thank you, eh...” Pinky set him down suddenly and tapped his chin thoughtfully, “I’m sorry, I still don’t know your name.”

Brain took a moment to catch his breath, “I am called, the Brain.”

“Thank you, Brain.”

Brain cleared his throat and spun around, trying to ignore the overly-adoring look in his new cagemate’s eyes. He looked his plan over a final time before searching the outside of their cage for something to unlock the door. “Yes!” he turned to his partner, “Pinky, do you think you can reach that paperclip over there?”

“Sure, Brain.” The mouse went to retrieve the paperclip and Brain smiled to himself, mentaly marking this as the night he would finally  _ take over the world! _


	2. I Didn't Notice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you know that you've fallen in love, are you really an emotionally repressed idiot?

Pinky stood on the counter, holding out his hand with a patient smile as the Brain slowly climbed up. He took the offered hand and let himself be dragged up, only a little annoyed when Pinky opted to carry him the rest of the way to their cage. Brain groaned as he was gently set on their shared bed, aching limbs immediately giving way as he lamely reached for the blanket. He heard Pinky chuckle as said blanket was tossed over him and strong hands went to massaging his sore neck and shoulders. He let himself melt into the touch and took a rare moment to enjoy the pleasant warmth in his cheeks. Another chuckle. Brain closed his eyes and listened to his partner’s soft humming.

Pinky placed a quick kiss on a spot behind Brain’s ear, one he’d seemed to have grown rather fond of in the past month or so. The smaller mouse sighed, used to, though still slightly confused by, his companion’s oddly intimate brand of affection. “It’s very pretty, you know,” Pinky said softly, almost to himself.

“What are you talking about, Pinky?” Brain responded a little disappointed by the broken silence.

“Poit. Your soulmark, Brain. What else?”

“I don’t have a soulmark, Pinky. You know that.”

“Yes you do,” Pinky tapped the spot behind Brain’s ear, “It’s right here, silly.”

Brain’s eyes shot open, tiredness reluctantly leaving his muscles, “What?” He jolted up, accidentally bumping Pinky’s snout as he did so, and frantically looked around as if he’d be able to see the alleged mark.

The taller mouse tenderly laid him back down, “Narf. Calm down, Brain. It’s been there for at least a month already.”

That assurance did not help the situation in the slightest. “A month!” Brain cried as he pawed at his ear, “But how? It’s not as if we’ve met anyone of note in that time, and I certainly never had a  _ soulbound _ with any of them... Do we even know who has the other mark?”

His friend stared at him incredulously, “I’m sorry, Brain, thought you knew- Troz. _ I _ have the other mark.”

The Brain couldn’t help the slight sigh of relief that escaped him, momentarily assuaged by the information. He took a moment to catch his breath and think. He scrutinized both what he could see of Pinky now and what he remembered seeing in the last month only to find no memory of him having a soulmark. He stared dumbly at his cagemate, miraculously at a loss for words in the face of an exceedingly simple issue. But Pinky, ever the empath, still answered the question his partner was struggling to ask, “It’s on my thigh; where the fake one was.” He pointed to the large mark which Brain was only now realising looked quite different from the original counterfeit. What had once been a basic star with some curvy lines about it had been replaced with a globe inset into what looked like a rose. The mark was elegant in its simplicity and all at once Brain was almost confused by the idea that it had ever not been there.

He didn’t take his eyes off the design as he spoke, “But why would it happen  _ now? _ After years of... _ this. _ Nothing has changed…” His voice trailed off as his hand trailed up to lightly brush the mark.

Pinky hummed thoughtfully, “What’s supposed to change?”

Brain blinked up at him as he absentmindedly pet his thigh. “Well, obviously we should- I should… I-” he paused, collecting his thoughts. “I feel no different about you, Pinky. Your presence elicits the same emotions in me that it always has,” Brain swallowed, significantly less confident in his words now that he’d actually said them. He waited anxiously for Pinky’s response.

Said mouse began to open his mouth before shutting it again. He stared somewhere outside their cage, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he scripted his reply. “Are they good emotions?” he finally asked.

“What?”

“Zort- Are they  _ good _ emotions, Brain? Do you like when I’m around?”

The Brain sputtered, “Of course I do. You’re the only person I… tolerate.” He cringed a little, the familiar expression sounding weak and cold in his ears.

His companion didn’t skip a beat however, drawing Brain up to his chest and affectionately rubbing their faces together. “Then what does it matter?- Troz! We make eachother happy, that seems good enough to me!” Pinky quickly kissed his friend on the forehead before pulling back to look into his eyes.

“Pinky I-” Brain guiltily reached up to caress his partner’s cheek, “I don’t know that I love you… Romantically speaking, at least.”

Pinky just leaned into him, “Narf- That’s fine, Brain. You don’t have to.”

Brain bit his lip and watched as Pinky closed his eyes and sighed happily under his touch. “And what about you?” he spoke through the wad of cotton suddenly filling his mouth, “How do  _ you _ feel… about me?”

The lab-mouse turned and placed a soft kiss on Brain’s palm, “I love you. I won’t pretend to know exactly how, but that doesn’t really matter to me very much- Poit.” 

Brain smiled relieved, “At least I am, for once, not alone in my emotional confusion.” His cagemate gave a dopey grin and held him a little closer to his chest. 

He laid them down, pulling the covers on top of them and nuzzled into the crook of Brain’s neck. “Goodnight, love,” he said and drifted almost immediately to sleep.

The Brain chuckled a little, “Goodnight, Pinky.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha, so many people lost their jobs and then the mice fell in love anyway. Anyway, thank you for reading this thing that I wrote; I hope it made you smile

**Author's Note:**

> AUs are hard and I'm extremely impressed with everyone that makes them. This one was so simple but it was still pretty difficult to figure out exactly how characters would interact with the whole one new element in here. This still feels kind of out of character but it's cute and I still like it so. Also, my first draft of Adri was literally just Skoodge from Invader Zim but as a mouse. That's not important, but it kind of is.


End file.
